Feds fail workers hurt by outsourcing (a real piss-you-off special)

[Bozita]

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061229/BIZ02/612290367

Feds fail workers hurt by outsourcing
Critics call for massive overhaul of program designed to help employees displaced by globalization.

Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau

The machine-tool designers at Tesco Technologies' Auburn Hills plant had long suspected that the Indian engineers whom they had helped train would one day take their jobs. The layoff notices, in the summer of 2004, were no surprise.

But the Tesco engineers had not imagined that they would face a second opponent: the U.S. Department of Labor. When they applied for help from a federal program designed to help those unemployed because of international trade, the department first delayed, then denied their application.

More than two years later, they're still waiting for benefits, despite a federal judge's ruling that the labor department officials essentially invented their reason for denying the workers' application. "I think their process (is) no matter what, they're going to deny it," said Gary Mosey, 50, of Oxford Township, who filed the original application and has been fighting since. "It's so late now, several of these people have either found another way to hang on, or they went down already."

One example of that, Mosey said, was the situation of a former co-worker, 60-year-old Lawrence Lawson, who was arrested in July after police said he tried to rob a Troy bank; his lawyer said the man was desperate for a place to live, even a jail cell, after losing his home.

more...

[hobbit709]

1. "Compassionate conservatism" at its best

[HughBeaumont]

2. Read "The Disposable American" by Louis Uchitelle.

Possibly the most eye-opening expose on how America is failing it's blue and white collar workers through heartless greed-driven business practices. Tales like this and others are highlighted in the book, and each ending is the same - the fired (and I KNOW how bosses HATE to use the "f" word, but on this side of the desk, THAT'S what it is) worker in turn has to fend for his/herself, often with meager to disastrous results.

It amazes me how corporations throwing their valuable employees to the wolves just so they can make an extra buck believe this is somehow a better work environment for all. A firing affects an individual forever; often times they cannot recover or reach the level of compensation they were once at. People who cannot save a dime because living costs enough as it is are expected to treat the loss of their livelihood as they would any other sudden life-threatening emergency - with planning, savings, etc. Why should ANYone have to live under this shroud of fear on a continuous basis?

Does corporate America have to be THIS BAD?

[NoAmericanTaliban]

6. Thanks for the tip

[BeatleBoot]

3. Michigan is in an Economic Depression

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061117/UPDATE/611170449&SearchID=73264037744898

Michigan's recent job loss compares to the Great Depression

A highly-regarded economic forecast to be released in Ann Arbor this morning compares Michigan's massive job loss in the past six years to the Great Depression and paints a bleak picture for the next two years.

Michigan lost 336,000 jobs in the past six years and it will lose another 33,000 in the next two years -- the longest stretch of employment loss in the state since the 1929 stock market crash plunged the nation into bleak times, say University of Michigan economists Joan Crary, George Fulton and Saul Hymans. This time the pain is focused solely in Michigan because of its reliance on the auto industry.

"Michigan is being battered by one of the most tenacious economic storms ever confronted by its citizenry," the economists write in their 28-page forecast. "At no time in its history, or at least as far back as the records take us, has the state endured such a drawn-out disturbance."

<more>

[tanyev]

4. George Bush's Dept of Labor is not there to help the laborers.

Its job is to help employers rid themselves of those pesky labor problems.

[NoAmericanTaliban]

5. There is a department of labor??

[HughBeaumont]

7. Look who the Labor Secretary is: Elaine Chao.

Heritage Fellow, Neo-con, married to fellow neo-con senaturd Mitch McConnell, staunchly free-trade, pro job offshoring.

Yeah, perfect person to oversee the needs of the LABOR of this country, dontcha think? Is EVERY Bewsh appointee a living example of the Peter Principle?